From Mudbloods to MuggleBorns
by Yasona Black
Summary: Companion piece to Ugly. A year after the war, Pansy's thoughts are filled with her Head of House's dead body. That is, until Harry Potter comes into the picture. Part One of Four. Slight Harry/Pansy
1. The Blushing Hero

**A/N:** This is a companion piece to _Ugly_. It's recommended but not required that you read that first. Pansy's backstory will make a lot more sense if you read _Ugly_ first. Also, _From Mudbloods to MuggleBorns _will be in four stand alone pieces within the same universe.

_From Mudbloods to MuggleBorns_  
>Part One: The Blushing Hero<p>

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><p>o0o<p>

It's her first dead body. The only dead body that she's ever seen. At the end of the war, she stayed as far away from the battle areas as possible and when her and Potter brought her Headmaster's body back to the castle, Pansy buried her head in Potter's shoulders so she wouldn't see. She still thinks it's strange that he let her, but she thinks that maybe Potter knew she was only ever on Snape's side.

It begins with sketches. They're drawn roughly at first, quick one minute sketches drawn with broken quills and bits of charcoal. Pansy doesn't fool herself. These aren't great works of art. Her own mother would be the first to state how terrible they were.

For all her fears of dead bodies, she can't stop drawing her old Head of House. Dead. The vision of his dead body plays over and over again in her head. At times, it's comforting; Pansy has no wish to ever forget the man who made her Hogwarts years bearable. So she draws his body from various perspectives with various items. In true Slytherin fashion, she grabs whatever's around, whatever's closest. One drawing was created messily with mud. Parchment covers the walls of her small flat. Quills are buried in the carpet. Ink and charcoal smudges coat the few spaces left clear of parchment. At other times, the repetitive image is maddening. She hides those drawing in her closets and shoves them into drawers. She tramples on them and crumples them up. Every now and then she tosses them into the rubbish bin only to furiously grab them out and smooth them clean.

The war's been over for a year. Severus Snape had been dead for a year. And Pansy knows that she is safer than she's ever been. It helps, really, living on the edge of the muggle world and wizarding world. Here she is safe from magic's constant threat and yet in rage of easy treatments for the muggle world's constant physical woes. But there's no Snape. No man to silently guide her. No partner in equally undesirable looks.

There's a constant ache in her chest. A constant gnawing at her stomach. She finds herself on her knees most days, sketching her terrible drawings and tacking them onto the wall with magic. She never uses magic on the drawing themselves; she still can't bear to see the sight of glistening blood.

The day Potter visits, Pansy is kneeling on the sitting room floor working on a particularly large sketch, rubbing her charcoal covered hands on the paper doing her best to get the wrinkles in Snape's face as good as possible. She'll be damned if she turns her professor into some ridiculous white knight. He would hate it.

Pansy turns her head up curiously at the hesitant knocking. She frowns and rubs a hand across her face, accidentally blackening her cheek, before standing up and walking to the door. When she turns the knob and opens the door the first thing she thinks is that Potter still doesn't look like a hero. In fact, he stands in her doorway with perpetually messy hair, shifting from foot to foot. He opens his mouth to speak but nothing comes out. He looks rather fish-like.

And everyone says Gryffindors are brave.

Pansy is tempted to ask him if he would like some gillyweed to go with that gape. Instead she raises an eyebrow and tries to maintain an aloof demeanor.

"Er…" Potter begins.

Pansy tries to pick up the slack in the conversation, but she doesn't know what to say. The time has passed for a witty remark. She leans against the doorframe and crosses her arms, waiting for Potter to find his famed bravery.

"Er…Uhm…Well, I don't actually know why I'm here," Potter finishes in a rush.

Pansy crunches her eyebrows but is silent.

"The thing is, someone mentioned you the other day, and uh, they said you live around here," he said, motioning with both hands.

Potter is the most awkward that Pansy has ever seen him.

It's strange, really, how much Pansy likes him this way.

There's a snarky comment on her lips that involves congratulating him on his sense of direction, but she quickly quashes it down. Not trusting her ability to speak without insulting, Pansy moves out of the doorway, allowing Potter entrance into her home. Uncrossing her arms, she rubs her hands on her skirt. For some reason, she's still wearing part of her Hogwarts uniform. Checking quickly, she's relieved when she finds out for certain that she didn't put the whole uniform on, just the skirt. With luck, Potter won't even notice.

If Potter notices, he doesn't say. He looks around the room with a gaze that's just as curious as Draco's but far less exacting. Suddenly, Pansy is all too aware of all the plates of moldy food that she had left out over the week and forgotten to eat. Potter steps forward and grimaces as a loud crack is heard.

"I'm so sorry," he says and bends down to clean up the pieces of charcoal. He continues to apologize, and Pansy can't help but feel that his apologizing is extraordinarily over the top for a small bit of coal.

"It's just charcoal," she forces out. It's hard to speak to Potter without insulting him. And here he was making it so easy.

She sees that the mess, including the dust and subsequent black streak is cleaned up. It took only moments.

"What were you some sort of house-elf in a past life?"

The words slip out before she can take them back and there's a pang in her heart as she remembers Dara.

Potter blushes furiously. "Something like that," he says, standing back up and holding out a hand. "Where's your rubbish bin?"

"I know you were muggle-raised, Potter, but aren't you a wizard?" Pansy asks.

Potter looks pointedly at Pansy's mussed appearance and blackened hands. Pansy bites the corner of her lip and waves to the rubbish bin in her muggle-style kitchen. Potter deposits the remains and wipes his hands over the trash.

Finally unable to quell her own curiosity, Pansy asks, "So, Potter. Why are you here?"

Potter winces at the harsh tone. "You can call me Harry," he says slowly. Looking at Pansy's face, Harry hastily adds an, "if you want to, of course."

There's a hundred thoughts running through Pansy's head but they're so interconnected she can't seem to make a single one out.

"But we're not friends," she finally says.

Potter says nothing and stares into her eyes. Flashes of her past week fly by and ending with yet another image of her Head of House.

Potter gasps. "I'm sorry," he says quickly.

Pansy begins to tell him to stop sniveling; the great Harry Potter was in her flat and doing nothing but apologizing, but Potter continues.

"I didn't," he swallows heavily, "I didn't mean to do that. Not without your permission."

_What?_

"What did you do?" Wait. No. He couldn't have.

"I'm sorry." He sounds pathetic. Helpless. Ashamed.

"You went through my _mind_? Get out. Get out now."

"It was an accident, I'm sorry. I don't quite have control over it yet."

"GET OUT!" Pansy hurls the first thing she can grab at him and she's ashamed to say it's one of her broken quills. The stupid Gryffindor doesn't even bother ducking.

"I'm sorry," he says one last time before quickly running out the door.

With a broken scream Pansy throws a mug at the closing door. Breathing heavily, she looks around her place. It sucks. She knows it. She hates everything about it. She hates the combination of magic and muggle. The two worlds just don't fit. And for the first time, she truly hates the drawings tacked on her wall. She begins going through her kitchen drawers. There's no rhyme or reason to it. She doesn't know what she's looking for or if she's looking for anything at all. But slamming them closed? That feels brilliant.

When she's slammed all the drawers, Pansy heads to the living room. She swears she can smell the stiffness of the parchment and it is overbearing. With a lunge she attacks the walls, shredding the parchment to pieces. When she's done, she waits for the ragged bits to fall to the floor, but nothing happens.

_Magic_.

Right. She had forgotten. She takes her wand from her pocket. How long since she had used it? A week? Two weeks? What for? What was the point?

She grips her hand around the wooden handle. It's become unfamiliar in her hand. She tries to remember the words to reverse the sticking charm. Her head is blank. The words aren't even close to the tip of her tongue.

There's a strangled sort of shriek.

_Was that her?_

The wand is gripped on both sides with both of her hands. The wand is trembling. No. Wait. That's her. She can see her knuckles whitening as her grip increases. She can feel magic twisting unnaturally beneath her fingertips.

It's the loudest _CRACK_ she's ever heard. It deafens her ears and there's a strange sort of light fluctuating around the broken pieces of her wand.

The door bangs open and Potter runs into the sitting room where he looks wide-eyed at her in shock.

Pansy is frozen. The only thought that comes into her mind is that Potter finally looks like a hero with his swaying hair, aggressive stance, and a ridiculous plan forming behind his eyes. It's about time she gets to see this.

"Drop the wand, Pansy!"

Pansy. She likes hearing her name roll off his lips.

"You need to drop the wand!"

Was he an auror? He sounds as if he had done this sort of thing a lot. She hears Potter curse and race toward her. What was he doing? She feels him slam her to the ground. Well that was going to leave a bruise. Wait, why was he prying her hands open?

A piece of wood slides out of her hand. Potter hisses in pain. That's right. The wand. She finally lets go of the other piece and Potter drags her up.

"Where are we going?" she asks dazedly.

"We have to get out of here!" Potter shouts. He wraps his arm around her and Pansy thinks that he's actually holding her up and helping her walk to the door.

"But I already threw you out."

Potter trods on the mug shards from earlier and pushes her out the door first and follows behind her. Potter looks at her small home and swears. Pansy tries to turn around and catches a glimpse of her house filling with a large bright light.

"Go!" Potter yells. "Run!"

But Pansy can't. She can't take her eyes off her home.

Potter slams her down to the ground, covering her body with his. Pansy tries to lift her head to tell him that she doesn't know him _that_ well, but Potter growls and shoves her head back down.

The house explodes.

Shards of glass, dust, and large slivers of wood rain down on them. Pansy is suddenly grateful that Potter is on top of her. It feels like forever, trapped under Potter's skinny, warm body. She can count Potter's heartbeat while laying on the ground. One thump. Two thump. Three. Four.

It stops.

"Potter?" she asks cautiously.

Not again. Not again. She can't do this. She can't have another dead body in her head. She doesn't want green and black eyes fighting for dominance in her mind.

Potter coughs and shifts his body slightly, but he's still on top of her.

His heartbeat thrums.

It must have just skipped a beat.

Though she'll later deny it, Pansy giggles.

Potter finally peels off of her and carefully helps her up. "Are you okay?" he asks.

Pansy looks from him to her house. What she means to say is 'no you foolish Gryffindor, you just destroyed my house' but what comes out is, "you're a mess."

Potter grins. "I'm not the only one. And I'm really sorry."

And although Pansy was trying to pin the blame on him, she really can't see exactly why Potter felt the need to apologize.

"Are you going to do anything besides apologize today?"

"But it's my fault your house is, well…" he trails off and gestures to the collapsed house.

Suddenly, Pansy is sick of Potter apologizing. "Look Potter, I am more than capable of tracing your culpability in this matter, but as I am the idiot who deciding snapping my wand would be a terrific idea, I think your culpability is far less than my own."

"Do all Slytherins talk like that? I always thought it was just Snape."

Pansy winces at the mention of her dead professor.

"I'm—"

"If you say sorry one more time, Potter, I'm going to find another wand and snap it with you trapped inside."

"Harry," Potter says.

"What?"

"It's Harry, please."

It was the please that did it. "Harry then," Pansy acquiesces. "And I suppose since you just had to save me from an exploding building and then shield me with your own body, you can call me Pansy."

Harry smiles and moves off his knees and wipes away a spot of dust so he can sit. Pansy sits up and turns slightly so that she's facing the wreckage of her home.

"How's your girlfriend going to take it when she learns that you just risked your life for a Slytherin you barely know?"

"She's not," Harry replies simply.

"Oh? You're going to pretend that you did nothing at all today?" Pansy never took Pott—Harry for a liar.

"She not going to take anything because I don't have a girlfriend."

"Oh." _Oh_. She debates about prying. Something had to have happened with the Weasley girl. But something thrums excitedly in her chest and she decides not to pry.

Harry looks relieved at the lack of questioning.

"I do hope you plan on treating me to dinner, as you are partly culpable in the loss of my house."

Harry smiles sweetly. It's an expression Pansy is unused to being given. "If you're not opposed to a muggle restaurant…" he trails off.

He's testing her. She wonders if he knows how badly she once wanted to go to the muggle world.

"Foreign cuisine could be a unique experience," Pansy answers.

The sweet smile broadens. She could get used to that smile.

Harry shakes rubble from his head as Pansy smoothes her skirt. After they're as cleaned up as they possibly can be (Pansy doesn't ask why he doesn't use his wand), Harry looks at Pansy awkwardly and hesitates before holding out his arm.

"Oh please, Pott—Harry," she stresses his name carefully, "we were just in a rather intimate position, I think I can handle joining arms."

Potter blushes. Pansy's grin is wide; she really enjoys seeing him blush. Now he looks the picture of the blushing hero that everyone raves about. For the first time in a year, Pansy sees something besides death. She sees life. Harry holds out his arm and Pansy wraps her own around his and they head off to the muggle world, their steps remarkably light for just escaping an exploding house. And if Harry left his arm too long on Pansy or if Pansy stared at Harry for just a bit longer than average, neither mentioned it.

o0o

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><p>Reviews, comments, and constructive criticism are loved.<p> 


	2. And Really Bad Eggs

_From Mudbloods to MuggleBorns  
><em>Part Two: And Really Bad Eggs

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><p>o0o<em><br>_

It's not until partway through a dinner of iffy looking scrambled eggs in a greasy diner with the famous vanquisher of Voldemort, does Pansy realize the magnitude of what had happened. She's not sure what makes her realize it. Perhaps it was the smell of something burning wafting towards her or perhaps that the smell of fried things reminds her of her old house-elf, Dara.

"I snapped my wand," Pansy says softly, dropping her forkful of eggs onto a piece of slightly burnt toast.

Harry twists in his seat and looks uncomfortably at her as if he's trying to figure out what to say. Pansy drags her eyes away from Harry and stares down at the white tablecloth. She had accidentally smeared some ketchup on the cheap tablecloth and for a moment she feels like she is four again. Her head is screaming at her to pick up the fork and clean up the mess. Instead, she sits numbly in her seat.

"Oh Merlin," she says, but then resists the urge to laugh because Merlin is not going to help her now. "I snapped my wand," she repeats.

"I'm sure you can get a new one," Harry says disjointedly, raising a hand in the air and then putting it back down where it twitches at his side.

Pansy doesn't miss it. "Were you just going to try to hug me?" she asks with an eyebrow raised.

"Uhm, er, I don't really know. Hermione is always trying to get me to…" he trails off and shrugs. Pink tinges the tips of his ears.

Pansy smiles wryly.

"So, are you going to get a new wand?" Harry asks.

"Of cour—," Pansy stops and then frowns. "What if I didn't?" The question is more to herself than Harry, but Potter responds regardless.

"Then…you wouldn't have a wand?"

No wand. Suddenly Pansy's back in a tree feeling lithe and free where she can feel the breeze across her skin, the bark on her palms, and she can hear the rustle of the leaves. But she fell.

No. She didn't fall. Draco scared her out of it.

He never did apologize for that.

Was that the day everything changed, she wonders.

The silence drags on punctuated only by the clatter of the kitchen dishes and the inane talk of an old muggle into a strange black device.

No wand. No magic. That was how it worked. Sure, Pansy had been living in some sort of magical half-life, only using magic when she couldn't find a muggle way; it had been part of her treatment Poppy had given her. It was an effort to make her see that muggles could get by, and so Pansy tried to do the same. She burnt more food than she could eat, could never get anything even partially cleaned, and stayed locked in her small flat on most days, afraid to venture fully into the world of muggles.

After everything, it was still scary.

Pansy picks up her fork again, twiddles it in the egg mess and starts spearing holes into her toast. She knows that this isn't proper restaurant behavior, but really, she's in a muggle diner with Harry freaking Potter and she has no idea where this is going to lead to.

Potter, of course, is looking curiously at her. Again. She feels like she is some sort of puzzle beneath his gaze and she thinks she remembers Snape giving him that look often. Not that Potter was ever smart enough to figure out that it wasn't a glare. Well, Pansy supposed if she was being honest then even them Slytherins had a difficult time figuring out the differences in their Head of House's glares. Favoritism their arse – Well, okay, maybe a little.

Potter, no iHarry/i, as he said, opened his mouth, then closed it and then made of show of scratching his neck. She supposed Harry had never bothered to learn how to hide his tell-tale nervous ticks.

Pansy could feel her heart beginning to race and her breathing beginning to quicken. Not for the first time, she direly wishes for a copious amount of calming draught, but after the war, she hasn't even been allowed a taste. Poppy had been so displeased and disappointed that she had overdone it. It was around then that Poppy had suggested she try focusing on something else when she yearned for the draughts and Pansy had picked up art, intending to learn how to paint moving portraits, but had ended up falling in love with creating stills with charcoal. You couldn't get any blacker with anything but charcoal, and black seemed to be Snape's favorite color. It was as close as she could get.

Her fingers itch for the feel of vine charcoal clenched in her hands. She yearns for the smell of parchment. And then she remembers that not only her wand is gone, but so is her home.

And so she lifts her head to Harry's and looks him directly in the eyes.

"I don't have anywhere to go," she says softly, as if she can't believe it has come to this.

She had once hated Potter because it was expected of her. No, that was a lie. She had once hated Potter because she had thought her Head of House hated Potter. But Harry had showed her the pensieve, full of memories. She often wishes that she had only been born a generation earlier, a generation without Draco's conflicting signals, a generation without Granger's strange tantalization, and a generation with Snape her own age.

But when she looks into Potter's eyes she can't believe how she ever thought that she could hate him. His eyes are soft and gentle, without pity but with a sort of understanding that she finds strange to see in them.

He barely seems to even contemplate the idea before he says, "you can stay with me."

At first she thinks it's a Gryffindor thing and that she's merely the damsel in distress. Perhaps Potter would get points for saving the poor Slytherin. After all, chivalry's not dead amongst the Gryffindor type. And then she thinks, because she's not a Slytherin for nothing, that Harry's offering because he knows what it's like to have nowhere to go. She finds it peculiar; the Potters were quite wealthy after all.

A voice niggles at her. So were the Parkinsons. And here she was, in a muggle diner with really bad eggs, nowhere to live, and her wand snapped leaving her as defenseless as a muggle.

How the mighty have fallen, she thinks.

Pansy cuts back a sarcasm-laden retort of how she's sure his place isn't up to snuff; she needs a place to stay and though Potter may be chivalrous, she doesn't want to chance her only place to go.

"Thank you," she grinds out, doing her best to sound pleasant. It must have worked because Harry is reaching out his hand towards her. He rubs his thumb over the back of her hand but when he notes her staring at the scar carved into his skin, he slowly draws back, his face reddened. He leans back and spreads his legs beneath the table. Pansy knows because she can feel his knee touching hers.

It's been so long since she's had any sort of physical contact from anyone. Sure, there was a hug here and there from Poppy on her monthly visits, but nothing from someone similar in age. Draco had long ago stopped visiting, letting his distaste at her half-muggle life openly known. Pansy thinks she should want to move her knee back, instead, she allows herself to smile at Harry.

How enraged her teenage self would have been.

Pansy is finding it harder to care, especially as Harry responds with a flushed smile as well.

When the check comes, Pansy looks at it, knowing full well that Potter will pay for it; he's chivalrous after all, and she says, "Well, you did blow up my house, Potter."

The words are out before she can take them back. What was she thinking? She needed a place to stay; she couldn't antagonize her only option, even if it was just a joke.

He laughs, surprising her. "I thought it was Harry, now?"

Relieved, Pansy answers, "It's still all a bit jumbled in my head."

"I imagine," he says.

He looks hesitant for a moment and Pansy can see him building up the courage. It's funny how similar it looks to Draco's preparation for one of his supposedly cunning lies.

"Do you, did you," he stutters on the sentence, "Did you want to stop and get a new wand first?"

And that was the question of the day, wasn't it? Here she was a witch without a wand. And past the age of eleven. It was nearly unheard of. In fact, it was unheard of. Even those capable of wandless magic always carried a wand.

But she snapped hers.

A witch without a wand. A witch who doesn't practice magic. How many witches could live that life? How extraordinary could it be if she was one of them? Draco wouldn't understand. Draco had never understood. She likes to think that Snape would have understood. But he's dead. Her chest still twists at the thought. Her fingers itch again for the charcoal.

"Perhaps I should make sure I'm not going to snap a wand before I get a new one. I suppose you might prefer your place intact?"

Harry grins and begins leading her away from the diner.

"There is one thing," she begins slowly, "that I'd like to get."

They stop in Diagon Alley and when Pansy enters Harry's small two bedroom flat, it's with hands clutching a few leaflets of parchment and pockets full of charcoal. Pansy thinks she should be surprised how small Harry's flat is, but then, he had never been one to boast.

"Why don't you live at your parent's old place?" she asks and then winces; she pretty certain she could have phrased that better.

"Why don't you?" Harry asks simply.

"Fair enough, Gryffindor," she says with a wink.

Pansy suddenly realizes how close they've ended up. Harry is short, so she can look at him directly and their noses are nearly touching. They stand there just for a minute and Pansy wonders which of them will make the first move.

But there are no first moves. Harry shakes his head uncertainly before saying, "I should show you to your room."

Pansy thinks how utterly perfect it is that his guest room has already become her room but when his hand softly touches her back to lead her around, all thought flies out of her head. She knows Harry's explaining the room and the flat around them, but she's too busy melting into his hand. She thinks that his hand keeps lingering far longer than needed, but she has no wish for him to take his hand away. Harry seems to have the same idea and keeps his hand on her back as he leads her around the place, his thumb stroking in the same rhythmic way it had at the restaurant. Pansy presses her body closer to him as they reach back at her room. They stand at the entryway and Harry's hand moves from her back and places his arm across her shoulders.

It's a heavy weight that comforts her like no one has ever done so before. Her mother never cared to hug her. Dara's hugs were always excited and very light and small. And Poppy's hugs had always been a bit on the careful side, a mediwitch/patient thing, she had always supposed. Pansy melts into it and Harry grabs her chin and points her face towards his.

"You'll be okay," he says and Pansy blinks. No wizard had ever said that to her before. Ever.

If Pansy had been a little less shocked, she probably would have kissed Harry. Instead, she nods and blinks back tears in her eyes, turning her face out of shame. Harry has a knowing look and drops his arm from her shoulders and rubs her back for a moment before leaving.

Pansy has no idea how long this will last or where it will go. She has no idea if she'll ever get another wand or if she'll just end up playing muggle for her life. But looking around in Harry's half-muggle, half-wizard flat, she thinks that whatever this is, it might just be okay. Just for now.

o0o

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><p>AN: Reviews, comments, constructive criticism all greatly loved and appreciated!


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